Investigation of the clonal associations in Acinetobacter Baumannii strains isolated from the respiratory samples of patients in a tertiary research hospital.

Abstract

The blaOXA resistance genes and ISAba1 were examined in 70 samples from lower respiratory tract of hospitalized patients. Of the 67 isolates obtained, almost half (46.3%) of them were from endotracheal aspirate, and most were collected from the intensive care units of the reanimation (37.3%) and internal medicine (32.8%) units. Three samples from the internal medicine intensive care unit had positive cultures. Of the multidrug resistant (MDR) samples, 70 isolates (>50%) were moderately sensitive, while fewer (10%) were resistant to tigecycline. In contrast, 100% were sensitive to colistin. All strains were found to be positive for blaOXA-23-like and blaOXA-51-like genes, whereas no blaOXA-40-like and blaOXA-58-like genes were detected. The ISAba1 positivity rate was 90.0%. Pattern 5 was mainly identified among the 22 different patterns. Of note, 50% of Pattern 5 was found in the patients of the internal medicine intensive care unit, and a third was associated with ventilator-associated pneumonia. Importantly, the internal medicine unit's equipment was found to be culture positive. Findings obtained from this study suggest that isolates can easily spread through the hospital via isolate cross-contamination caused by health personnel. These contaminating isolates may be able to maintain their presence within the hospital for a long time.